Internet Gaming, Emotional Intelligence, Psychological Distress, and Academic Performance Among University Students

Abstract

<jats:p>This research aimed at determining the relationship of internet gaming with emotional intelligence, psychological distress, and academic performance among university students; it also investigated whether playing timings could influence psychological distress and emotional intelligence. A sample comprising 315 university students (boys = 161, girls = 154) was collected. Internet Gaming Disorder Test (Pontes, Kiraly, Demetrovics, &amp; Griffiths, 2014), Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (Wong &amp; Law, 2002) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (Lovibond &amp; Lovibond, 1995) were used. Academic performance was measured through grades obtained during last two semesters. Results revealed internet gaming had significant positive relationship with psychological distress, whereas it was linked to emotional intelligence and academic performance negatively. Students who played more after mid-night were psychologically more distressed than those who played during morning, evening, or early night time. Outcomes of this research will be beneficial in developing effective awareness programs for the individuals who are highly involved in internet gaming to understand its negative consequences.</jats:p>

Problematic Gaming and Students’ Academic Performance: A Systematic Review

“…The sample sizes of the reviewed studies varied between 91 and 11,003 participants. Five studies had more than 1000 participants (Brunborg et al, 2014;Chiu et al, 2004;Gentile, 2009;Rehbein et al, 2015;Shi et al, 2019), five studies had more than 500 to 1000 participants (Ciris et al, 2022;ELNahas et al, 2018;Hawi et al, 2018;Jeong & Kim, 2011;Van Den Eijnden et al, 2018), nine studies had more than 300 to 500 participants (Haghbin et al, 2013;Jaafar et al, 2021;Karnadi & Pangestu, 2021;Sahin et al, 2016;Samaha & Hawi, 2020;Schmitt & Livingston, 2015;Skoric et al, 2009;Zahra et al, 2020;Zorbaz et al, 2015), five studies had more than 200 to 300 participants (Al Asqah et al, 2020;Durak et al, 2022;Ekşi et al, 2020;Polat & Topal, 2022;Zhang et al, 2019) and the remaining three studies had less than 200 participants (Suryawanshi et al, 2021;Toker & Baturay, 2016;Yang et al, 2022).…”

“…Limited generalisability to other populations due to using self-reported Lebanese-only data; lack of some demographic information (age range); the temporal link and causality cannot be determined due to using a crosssectional design; Sampling bias due to a non-probability sampling method (convenience) and the vast majority of the sample was male; GPA was self-reported. (Yang et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2019), two from Lebanon (Hawi et al, 2018;Samaha & Hawi, 2020), two from the United States (Gentile, 2009;Schmitt & Livingston, 2015), one from India (Suryawanshi et al, 2021), one from Indonesia (Karnadi & Pangestu, 2021), one from Malaysia (Jaafar et al, 2021), one from Pakistan (Zahra et al, 2020), one from Saudi Arabia (Al Asqah et al, 2020), one from Canada (Shi et al, 2019), one from Netherlands (Van Den Eijnden et al, 2018), one from Egypt (ELNahas et al, 2018), one from Germany (Rehbein et al, 2015), one from Norway (Brunborg et al, 2014), one from Iran (Haghbin et al, 2013), one from South Korea (Jeong & Kim, 2011), one from Singapore (Skoric et al, 2009), and one from Taiwan (Chiu et al, 2004).…”

“…Regarding the age of the participants and the sample group, eleven studies recruited college or university students aged 18 to 27 years (Al Asqah et al, 2020;ELNahas et al, 2018;Jaafar et al, 2021;Karnadi & Pangestu, 2021;Samaha & Hawi, 2020;Schmitt & Livingston, 2015;Suryawanshi et al, 2021;Toker & Baturay, 2016;Yang et al, 2022;Zahra et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2019), ten studies recruited students aged 8 to 18 years from primary, middle and/or high schools (Brunborg et al, 2014;Durak et al, 2022;Ekşi et al, 2020;Gentile, 2009;Hawi et al, 2018;Jeong & Kim, 2011;Rehbein et al, 2015;Sahin et al, 2016;Skoric et al, 2009;Van Den Eijnden et al, 2018), and six studies did not provide information about the participants' age, but the authors indicated that the participants were school students in grades 5-8 (Chiu et al, 2004), in grades 4 and 5 (Zorbaz et al, 2015), in grades 7-12 (Shi et al, 2019), in grades 9-12 (Ciris et al, 2022), in grades 5 and 6 (Polat & Topal, 2022), and high-school students (Haghbin et al, 2013).…”

Internet Gaming Disorder and Mental Health of Pakistani Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Research findings indicate that computer gaming is widely popular among university students in Pakistan, regardless of their gender. Zahra et al (2019) discovered that male university students displayed a greater prevalence of online gaming in comparison to females.…”

Recovery Experiences Protect Emotionally Exhausted White-Collar Workers from Gaming Addiction

“…The global prevalence of gaming addiction was around 3.05% between 2009 and 2019, and the trend has been increasing [3]. Considering its high prevalence and numerous adverse consequences on both physical and mental health (e.g., depression and sleep problems) [4][5][6], a bulk of research has been conducted to uncover risk/protective factors and underlying mechanisms of gaming addiction in different populations [7]. This study aims to examine not only the risk factors of gaming addiction but also the protective effects of recovery experiencers against gaming addiction in working adults, who are at risk but have been neglected in prior research.…”